We now have the definitive date for the all important Santa Monica City Councilhearing on the Hines/Papermate project. Please mark your calendars NOW forthis critical City Council hearing on Tuesday, Jan 28 for possible approval ofthe behemoth Hines Papermate project at 26th and Olympic.

Council starting time at 7 pm but we may want to hold a press conferencebeforehand at City Hall. We'll let you know in plenty of time about that.

Unfortunately,as you know, our Planning Commission, voted 4 to 3 to recommendthe project go on to the City Council despite serious criticism of its size,impacts, and design.

We know the developer will have its array of enthusiastic speakers lined up insupport of the project so we are going to need hundreds of residents there whoare opposed to the current project in order to get it downsized and redesignedto avoid crippling traffic and neighborhood impacts.

We hope you will join us in alerting your group members about this hearing andthe importance of being there. We had well over 300 people at the DowntownSpecific Plan forum in May - this is doable with all of us working together aswe did then. After January 1st we will be sending out our SMCLC email alert toour supporters.

And as we get closer, we will update you with the release of the staff reportand related documents as well as SMCLC's planned actions.